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6 Lessons from Watching 40 FIFA World Cup Games

6 Lessons from Watching 40 FIFA World Cup Games

by | Jul 11, 2018 | Just for Fun

I am not a soccer fan but my husband is. So why, as a non-soccer fan, would I watch so many World Cup games?

I could spin a high-minded tale about the importance of diverse experiences in driving empathy and creativity and that “getting out of your comfort zone” and experiencing new things can be as simple as watching a new channel or program.

I could go all business guru and pratter on about the fact that sports tend to produce wonderful case studies of what to do and not to do in the areas of leadership, teaming, and all other things management

But the truth is that I spent most of June sick in bed with something that exactly mirrored Whooping Cough (it wasn’t) and, during the Group Phase, I didn’t have the energy to commandeer the remote control and change the channel. By the time we got to the knock-out phase, however, I had a bit more energy, had adopted several teams as my own (Sweden, Denmark, and England) and was peppering my husband with questions about players, teams, rules, and all other things soccer.

So, with the Final match scheduled for Sunday, thought I would share what I’ve learned about leadership and innovation from watching 40 soccer games.

#1: Teams need Leaders, not managers

Argentina’s coach, Jorge Sampaoli

Argentina’s coach, Jorge Sampaoli, yelling from the sidelines (SOURCE: Getty — Contributor)

Untold books have been written on this subject and it played out for the world to see during Argentina’s World Cup run.

Argentina was considered one of the top contenders for the World Cup, having come in 2nd during the 2014 World Cup. The country has some of the world’s greatest players and perhaps none are greater than “The Magician,” Lionel Messi. With such a dominant line-up, it would seem that the coach’s job would be relatively easy — win the trust and respect of the team’s stars, inspire them to play well together as a team and then get out of the way.

But Argentina’s coach, Jorge Sampaoli, couldn’t seem to do that.

During Argentina’s first game, three top players were inexplicably benched and the game, which Argentina should have won easily, ended in a tie (more on that in the next lesson). For the next game, Sampaoli “went with a bizarre 3-man backline” (I don’t know exactly what that means but “bizarre” is never a word you want associated with your starting line-up) and the “disconnect between Aguero, Messi, and the others was apparent from the first minute.”

The result? Argentina lost to Croatia 0–3 and the players staged a coup, holding a meeting with the Argentine FA chiefs (basically the “front office” of the team) to demand that Sampaoli and the entire coaching staff be fired as part of a “pact for life” because “the players want to build a team.”

The coup failed. Sampaoli was allowed to keep his job (but was told he would be fired at the end of the competition). And the players, having no confidence or respect for the coach, resisted, fielding their own starting line-up for the third and final game of the Group Stage, a 2–1 victory over Nigeria.

Argentina struggled in the lead-up to the World Cup and underperformed during its first two games because it didn’t have a Leader (someone the team respects and wants to follow), it had a Manager (someone who demands obedience based on a title or organization hierarchy). When leaders finally rose up, it was too late — Argentina barely qualified for the Knock-out stage and promptly lost 4–3 to France.

#2: Don’t get hung up on job titles. Hire for skills.

Lionel Messi taking a penalty kick

Lionel Messi takes his shot at Iceland’s goalie

In the first game of the Group Stage, Iceland, the smallest country ever to qualify for the World Cup, found itself playing Argentina. As if that were not challenging enough, in the 64th minute of a tied game, Argentina was granted a penalty kick and Lionel “The Magician” Messi stepped to the line. All he had to do was send the ball past Iceland’s goalie and his team would have a 2–1 lead.

He missed.

To be more specific, one of the greatest soccer players of all time, one who makes 76% of his penalty kicks, had his kick blocked by a goalie who is better known for directing a Coca-Cola commercial than for playing soccer. When asked how he achieved such an impossible feat, Hannes Halldorsson, a former filmmaker turned goalie, attributed his success to “film study.”

Sure, Halldorsson has soccer skills (basic job requirements) but kudos to Iceland’s coach for seeing value in non-traditional experience and to Halldorsson for using them to prepare for the big game.

#3: If you’re going to talk smack, you better be able to back it up

Denmark’s goalie, Kasper Schmeichel

Denmark’s goalie, Kasper Schmeichel, is PUMPED

Sticking with the theme of Nordic goalies, let’s talk about Denmark’s Kasper Schmeichel. If there were such a thing as Danish soccer royalty, it would be the Schmeichels.

Peter Schmeichel, the family patriarch, was voted world’s best goalkeeper in 1992 and 1993, captained Denmark to a championship in the 1992 UEFA World, AND captained Manchester United to the 1999 Champions League title and the Treble (it’s like the Triple Crown but for English soccer and it happens about as frequently…which is rarely). His son, Kasper made his World Cup debut this year and promptly beat his father’s record of most playing minutes (533 to be exact) for Denmark without conceding a goal.

So yeah, if Kasper talks smack to opposing players, daring them to try to get the ball past him, it’s pretty certain that he can back it up.

Until he can’t.

In Denmark’s match against Australia, Schmeichel came out of the goal to get in the face of a Mile Jedinak while the player was lining up for his penalty kick. Trash talk is nothing new in sports (in fact, I’d argue that it has been honed to a fine and humorous art form) but whatever Schmeichel said apparently went too far for commentators on social media, in the press, and even game officials who warned him about getting too close to the Australian.

A few seconds later, the ball went screaming past Schmeichel, scoring the tying goal for Australia and ending Schmeichel’s record.

#4: Don’t be afraid to experiment (and don’t let anyone tell you that you’re experimenting too much)

Mexico's National Football team coach, Juan Carlos Osorio

Mexico’s Tinkerer-In-Chief, Juan Carlos Osorio

Juan Carlos Osorio, Mexico’s coach, has the highest winning percentage of any Mexican national coach in the past 80 years. So why were 85,000 fans shouting “Fuera!” (Out!) at him during the team’s 1–0 victory over Scotland during a World Cup warm-up game in June?

Because he took the field with a new starting line-up.

It was his 48th different starting line-up in his 48 games as a national coach. That is a new line-up Every. Single. Game.

His tinkering continued into the World Cup where a new line-up beat defending World Cup Champions Germany only to be replaced by a new new line-up for game 2’s match-up against South Korea (which Mexico also won).

In his 52nd game as Mexico’s coach, Osorio changed tactics and did NOT change his line-up. They lost 3–0 to Sweden.

#5: Your performance, not your reputation, matters most

German players Mario Gomez (23) and Mats Hummels (5)

German players Mario Gomez (23) and Mats Hummels (5) react to losing to South Korea and their elimination from the tournament

Speaking of Germany, 2014’s World Cup champs came into the tournament ready to defend their title, ranked #1 in the world by FIFA, and with a 10–0 record in qualifying rounds.

They didn’t even make it out of the Group Stage.

How shocking was this? I think The Guardian summed it up nicely:

This, then, is how the world ends, not with a bang but with a whimper. There are certain events so apocalyptic that it feels they cannot just happen. They should be signalled beneath thunderous skies as owls catch falcons and horses turn and eat themselves. At the very least there should be a sense of fury, of thwarted effort, of energies exhausted. And yet Germany went out of the World Cup in the first round for the first time in 80 years on a pleasantly sunny afternoon with barely a flicker of resistance. There was no Sturm. There was no Drang.

Sports, business, heck, even life, is tough. Past performance should count for something and it usually does — it earns an opportunity. But it’s what you do with that opportunity that determines whether you win or lose.

#6: When all else fails, have a signature hairstyle

After watching 40 games, I have concluded that (1) hair is a big deal in soccer and (2) players must have access to hair product that the general public doesn’t because their hair maintains its original style of 90+ minutes of intense exercise. Some cases in point…

Neymar

Brazilian star Neymar debuts his World Cup hairstyle against Switzerland. For the next game, delighted fans responded by gluing raw clumps of ramen noodles to their foreheads in support of this style choice (SOURCE: Getty Images)

Olivier Giroud

French player Olivier Giroud’s hair defies gravity. Seriously, this is his hair at the END of a game! How is this even possible?!?!

Christiano Ronaldo

OK, I know that Portuguese star Christian Ronaldo’s hair doesn’t look as crazy as some others but it’s no less important. Prior to their World Cup match against Uruguay, the story of a 2010 match re-surfaced in which one of Uruguay’s players was asked how the team planned to stop Ronaldo. Plan A was to take him out with a tackle. If that didn’t work, Plan B was to “ruffle his hair to annoy him.” Plan A was enacted in the 6th minute of the game and didn’t work, so Uruguay when with Plan B. Ronaldo responded so furiously he was almost kicked out of the game. In the post-game press conference, Marcelo “Hair Ruffler” Sosa commented with amusement that Ronaldo seemed “more upset by me messing up his hair than the foul!”

There you have it. Every business/innovation/leadership/personal style lesson I learned from watching the World Cup. Now it’s off to the hair salon…

It’s Time to Stop the Innovation Snobbery

It’s Time to Stop the Innovation Snobbery

by | Jun 3, 2018 | Innovation

My name is Robyn and I am a recovering Innovation Snob.

I didn’t realize I was an Innovation Snob until a few days ago when I read the following in CB Insights’ report State of Innovation: Survey of 677 Corporate Strategy Executives, “Despite deep fear and talk of disruption, companies invest in the small stuff… 78% of innovation portfolios are allocated to continuous innovation instead of disruptive risks.”

“That’s exactly what they should be doing,” I thought to myself. “After all, the Golden Ratio often preached when discussing innovation portfolios is that 70% should be allocated to Incremental or Sustaining innovations, 20% to Adjacent innovations, and 10% to Disruptive or Breakthrough Innovations.”

That’s when it hit me:

  1. When talking about “Incremental Innovation,” we actually mean “Incremental Improvement.”
  2. Because we mean “Improvement” (even when we say “Innovation”), we don’t value Incremental Innovation in the same way that we value the innovations that introduce truly new things (products, services, technologies, business models) to the world and dismissing it as “less than” those “higher forms” of innovation.
  3. Dismissing Incremental Innovation as “less important/valuable than” other types of innovation is not only snobbish and hypocritical, it is incredibly ignorant. Incremental Innovation is exactly this type of innovation that a company must do in order to stay competitive today AND fund the Adjacent and Breakthrough innovations that will define it’s future.
  4. I am 100% guilty of telling people that Incremental Innovation is important and then rolling my eyes when someone pitches an incremental improvement as innovation

I hate it when I get all self-righteous and judgey about someone or something only to realize that I am just as guilty.

Cher from Clueless making a face after hitting a car

Ooops, my bad

How did we get here?

There’s probably lots of reasons for this gap between what we say (“Incremental Innovation is an essential component of any innovation portfolio”) and what we do (“Incremental innovation isn’t real innovation”) but these are probably the 3 biggest drivers:

  1. Incremental Innovation will not make you famous. No company has ever landed on Fast Company’s “Most Innovative” list because they launched better/faster/cheaper/easier to use versions of their existing products. No one has ever been invited to speak at TED because they made a slight improvement to someone else’s idea.
  2. Incremental Innovation will not make you rich. Entrepreneurs with dreams of starting a unicorn company (and realizing the massive payout that comes with it) don’t look for things they can improve, they look for things they can “disrupt.” Companies know that Incremental Innovation is better suited to helping them maintain their place in their industry, not catapult ahead to the top of the heap. Consultants know that no company will hire them to help with Incremental Innovation, so they publish and preach and sell the promise of cheap and risk-free breakthroughs.
  3. We are so desperate to be seen as Innovative that we’re afraid to be honest. Words matter and, even though it’s a buzz-word, companies love the word “innovation.” Their annual reports and quarterly calls are filled with it, employees are measured on it, valuation premiums are calculated using it. As a result, we know that we are more likely to get budget, people, support, recognitions, raises, and promotions if we say we’re working on “Innovation” even though, in our heart of hearts, we know it’s an improvement.

Where do we go from here?

Cher from Clueless packing boxes for emergency relief

Captain of the “Incremental is Innovation, Too!” campaign

We have 3 options:

  1. Keep calling incremental changes “innovation
  2. Stop calling incremental changes “innovation” and start calling them “improvements”
  3. Start using more specific language to describe innovation instead of just using “innovation” as a one-size-fits-whatever-I-want-it-to term

Personally, I’m in favor of #3 because it recognizes that doing something new or different is innovation and therefore difficult and forces organizations to be more disciplined in how they make decisions, especially ones related to resources allocation.

For those wanting to pursue option #3, there are lots of ways to go about it and I’ll cover many of them in an upcoming post. But the easiest way to start is by asking three simple questions:

  1. Does what we’re doing improve something that already exists (e.g. make it easier to use, cheaper, more accessible)?
  2. Does what we’re doing change the way we go to market (e.g. from selling through a retailer to going DTC) or make money (e.g. selling subscriptions instead of having the consumer pay for an item when they buy it) or who we’re targeting (e.g. from targeting women to targeting children)?
  3. Does what we’re doing change how we go to market and how we make money and who we target/compete against?

If you answered Yes to #1, you’re doing Incremental Innovation. Yes to #2 is Adjacent. Yes to #3 is Breakthrough.

All 3 are essential components of a health Innovation Portfolio. Each requires different people and processes to make them work. Each deserves recognition and respect from peers, leaders, press, stockholders, and the general public.

Let’s be honest, I’m not sure that I’ll ever be as excited for Incremental Innovation as I am for Breakthrough innovation. I can’t imagine ooohhh-ing and ahhhh-ing over it the way that I do with breakthroughs. But I need to respect, value, and celebrate it, and the people who do it, as much as I respect, value and celebrate other types of innovations and the teams that work on them.

My name is Robyn and I am a RECOVERING innovation snob.

What Explaining the Poop Emoji to a 5-year old Taught Me About Innovation

What Explaining the Poop Emoji to a 5-year old Taught Me About Innovation

by | Apr 8, 2018 | Innovation

A few weeks ago, my 5-year old niece and I spent the afternoon together at a paint-your-own-pottery place. My niece was adamant that she wanted to paint something for her dad and immediately zoned in on a piece — a 3D poop emoji.

Remembering my sister’s parenting advice, I started with a question, “Why do you want to paint that for Daddy?”

Her response was simple enough, “Because it’s chocolate.”

I could have easily left it at that.

But I didn’t.

“Ok….why don’t you paint the pegasus for Daddy instead?”

She looked up at me with her big brown eyes, “Why?”

“Ummm, well, I just think it’s better.”

She scrunched her nose as she usually does when she doesn’t understand something, looked back at the poop emoji, and then silently picked up the Pegasus and took it over to our table.

With a sigh of relief — I knew my sister would be none to happy with me explaining the poop emoji — I thought the issue was resolved. I was wrong.

An hour later, as we stood hand-in-hand on the sidewalk waiting for her dad to come pick us up, my niece asked, “Aunt Robyn, why didn’t you want me to paint the chocolate for Daddy?”

Crap (pun somewhat intended). I have to do this. I have to be honest and explain this, and I am going to be in SO much trouble when we get home.

“Well, darling, that’s not chocolate. It’s poop.”

She scrunched up her nose, pursed her lips, gave a quick nod, and continued staring out into the parking lot.

Later that night, I confessed the moment to her parents. They burst out laughing.

“That would have been hilarious!” my brother-in-law proclaimed.

“Why didn’t you just let her paint it? It’s not poop to her” my sister sighed.

That thought literally never occurred to me. It never crossed my mind that letting her paint what she thought was chocolate would result in a heart-felt (and amusing) gift to her dad of a rainbow (her favorite color at the moment and thus what everything gets painted) poop emoji to display in his office.

Instead, I thought I was saving her from embarrassment by correcting how she saw something so that her understanding was in-line with the status quo.

I’ve felt horrible about this since it happened but the experience, the ease with which it happened and the smug self-righteousness I felt about “saving” her, taught me a very important lesson about why creativity and innovation are so often killed in organizations.

For the first time, I could understand and empathize with every Dr. No I’ve ever encountered. You know who I’m writing about, the person in your organization who, whenever a new idea pops up, says, “No, we can’t do that because…

  • …that’s not how it’s done in our company/industry”
  • …we tried that back in 19XX and it didn’t work.”
  • …the bosses will never approve it.”
  • …now is not the right time.”
  • …it’s took risky/expensive.”
  • …you’ll get fired if it doesn’t work and I don’t want that to happen to you.”

My whole career, I’ve hated Dr. No and used him/her as motivation to innovate. I would focus all my energy on finding a way to prove them wrong by doing something new AND making sure that new thing was wildly successful.

What I thought I was saving everyone from

But, in that pottery shop, I was Dr. No and I didn’t realize it. In fact, I felt proud of myself.

I felt proud because I was acting out of love. I wanted to protect someone who is innocent and precious. I wanted to spare her the embarrassment and shame that I thought would surely result from giving her dad a rainbow-colored piece of poop pottery.

And maybe that is where other Dr. No’s are coming from. Maybe the are saying “No” as a way to protect you and/or the company. Maybe they tried to do what you’re suggesting and they are still smarting from the pain of it not working out. Maybe they are trying to spare you the embarrassment and shame of pursuing the proverbial corporate rainbow-colored poop pottery.

And no matter how often you try to explain that the new idea is chocolate and not poop, they won’t hear you. Because they are anchored in a status quo reality that demands things be seen in one, and only one, way.

And in that moment you, the innovator, has a choice. You can scrunch your nose and move on to something safer or you can defiantly insist on painting that poop, confident that it will become a rainbow work of art that is treasured by the people that matter the most.

And, hopefully, you can have a bit of compassion for Dr. No who is simply trying to help you because she loves you.

EPILOGUE

A few weeks after the poop pottery incident, my sister told me that my niece asked to send a text message to her dad. My niece’s text messages are entirely comprised of emojis and after a few seconds of tapping out flowers and suns and rainbows, my niece’s finger stopped, hovering briefly over the screen.

“What’s wrong, honey?” my sister asked

“Do you know what this is?” my niece responded, pointing to the poop emoji

“What do you think it is?”

“Aunt Robyn said it’s poop…”

“Well, a lot of people think that’s what it is. but your Daddy told me that he read an article that it was originally designed to be chocolate ice cream on top of an ice cream cone. So you can think of it that way too.” (my sister swears this is a true story).

“Ok. Then it’s chocolate ice cream!” my niece exclaimed before adding at least a dozen chocolate ice creams to her text

Well done, little one. Well done.